HISTORY OF EDUCATION,
2001,
VOL.
30,
NO.
2, 109± 116
Questioning the visual in the history of education
Kate Rousmaniere
Miami University, Ohio, USA. e-mail: [email protected]
Introduction
Photographs, like memories, are subjective records, created when we blend the actual with the
1
invented or constructed . . .
This paper is a brief examination of the way that the creative use of visual images in
history of education work has allowed me to broaden my way of thinking about the
2
past and `loosen up’ my ways of interpreting and using history. I believe that
historical images can provide answers to our research about the past, but that
they can also raise new questions, and thereby open up new interpretations about
the past.
Seeing the subject
Images of schools in history can be used as an archive of historical information.
Images stop time in a frozen frame, and thereby allow us to see new pieces of
evidence of history, thereby contributing to our data bank of knowledge about the
past. In this way, visual images are used as building blocks for the construction of a
historical narrative of schooling. Historians of education have made good use of
visual sources to deepen our understanding of school practices in the past. Some
historians have examined formal class photographs to identify what kinds of people
went to school, as well as to re¯ ect on the use of the posed class photograph as a
form of ritual disciplining and control. The study of school architecture reveals the
ideological position of educational organizations, and the study of school design
oŒers a view into the physical character of students’ and teachers’ daily lives in
schools. Clues to curriculum messages of the past are gleaned through examinations
of visual aspects of classroom pedagogies including textbook images, school ® lmstrips, wall posters, dress codes, behaviour rules, and handwriting norms. Historians
have also explored how historical iconography and stereotyped images of the classroom, women teachers, students, and administrators have moulded popular expectations of school practices and educational policy over time. Historians ask: What
can we learn from these images about school practices and educational ideologies of
3
the past?
1 Angela Grauerholz, `Sententia I to LXII’, Museum of Contemporary Photography, Columbia College,
Chicago, April 2000.
2 See also Kate Rousmaniere, `Expanding the visual in the history of education: or, how to look at old
pictures of schools’, http://www.muohio.edu/edl
3 See Paedagogica Historica, papers from the ISCHE Conference, Kortrijk, Belgium, 1998; Thomas
Marcus, Buildings and Power (Routledge, 1993); Pamela Bolotin Joseph and Gail E. Burnaford, Images
of Schoolteachers in Twentieth Century America: Paragons, Polarities, Complexities (St Martin’s Press,
1994); Kathleen Weiler, `Gender, race, and class photographs’, and Alison Jones, `Surveillance and
student handwriting: tracing the body’, papers presented at the American Educational Research
Association Conference, San Diego, 1998; and Sandra Weber and Claudia Mitchell, That’s Funny,
You Don’t Look Like a Teacher: Interrogating Images and Identity in Popular Culture (London, 1995).
History of Education ISSN 0046± 760X print/ISSN 1464± 5130 online # 2001 Taylor & Francis Ltd
http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals
DOI: 10.1080 /0046760001001239 1
110
K. Rousmaniere
Yet while the analysis of visual artefacts can contribute to the writing of vivid
and engaging history, it does not necessarily create new methodologies. Rather than
challenging the historical narrative, visual images are very often dropped into a text
as illustration, reinforcing the point of the written history with a new type of information. The questions often remain the same as when using written text: What
happened so many years ago in this classroom? How did it happen? What did it
mean to those who were there?
Changing the questions
What diŒerent types of questions might we ask of an image to complicate our way of
4
thinking about history and the present? Let us think, for example, of an image of a
teacher as not just a story that is told (a young woman is in a classroom with
students) but as a means of expression, an aesthetic, and a cultural symbol.
Consider the permanence of the image of the teacher and the classroom. The
image is almost an icon. We see a woman with many young children and we
`know’ it is a teacher. Why do we know that? What cultural assumptions and understandings support our almost instantaneous recognition of this image as `a teacher’ ?
What signs and symbols in the image shout out at us: `this is a teacher!’? How do we
know that, when in fact none of us was present when this image was created? How
do we know how to read this image, and to what extent does this image express itself
to us, literally telling us what it is? What are the components of that expressionÐ the
types of symbols or signs, the way in which they are almost universally articulated to
us: woman teacher, small children, some kind of enclosed space?
The very commonalty and seeming universality of the image of `the school’ and
`the teacher’ should raise questions. We recognize the setting, the pose, the expressions all over the world. How did that happen? If a nineteenth-century school scene
in Bermuda or Japan seems familiar to Americans one hundred years later, we might
wonder why. Why are these scenes so familiar, so seemingly universal? Are the
common structures the result of colonialism and the dominance of Western practices? Or are we, as products of those same practices, merely seeing what we have
been taught to see? The very universality of these images can raise provocative
questions about what we see and how we see it.
We might then question the organization of those symbols, or the way in which
we have been taught to receive them. When does a picture of a school not look like a
picture of a school? And when we identify something as `a school’ , what are we
ignoring? Compare a picture of a wealthy and a poor school; by calling them both
`schools’ do we emphasize an institutional de® nition over a very real diŒerence?
What, in fact, do these two groups of children have in common? Do we minimize
that diŒerence by identifying both as `classrooms’?
So, too, we may focus on the obvious symbols and ignore the questions that we
might ask of other signs. When we look at a photograph of what appears to be a
familiar, typical classroom from long ago, we can easily identify the familiar signs:
woman teacher with small children posed stiç y. We may notice indications of the
health of the children, signs of wealth or poverty, gender, skin colour, and cultural
attributes like dress, and we may develop conclusions about the kind of school that
4 A good example of this type of work is Ian Grosvenor, `On visualizing past classrooms’, in Ian
Grosvenor, Martin Lawn and Kate Rousmaniere (eds), Silences and Images: The Social History of
the Classroom (New York, 1999).
Questioning the visual
111
this was, the time period in which it was taken, the nature of the curriculum. But
`knowing’ all this, we may neglect to explore other aspects of the image: the variety
of expressions on the children’s faces, indicating their own diŒerent personal experiences of schooling. How do these students feel about lining up for the photographer?
What social processes organize them to stand in this certain way, next to a friend or
enemy, standing behind another child to make it all the easier to pinch him/her after
the photograph is taken? How does this event contribute to their education as social
beings, and as students in the mathematics class that they will ® le into soon after the
photography session? What is the teacher thinking? How many class photographs
has he/she posed for with his/her students? Is this year’ s class any better behaved
than others? Does he/she enjoy his/her work as a teacher? Does he/she care any
more?
Making the familiar strange
These are good questions, but we are still somewhat rooted in the past and in the
representational aspect of the image. We are still considering the image as some kind
of evidence of a `real past’ and we are still struggling to ® nd out more about that
past. To that extent, we have only begun our work because we still need to investigate the production of images, the social and political structures and dynamics
behind these representations of history. But my objective here is to step farther
away from that kind of analysis into another approach that admittedly avoids
question of production or the social context of the image. I want to leave the
historical questions aside as I look at images of schools in history.
Images can be used not only to document, but also to mobilize emotion and
political analysis. John Berger and Ronald Barthes argue that a photograph can be
liberated from a technical reading of its production to elicit personal and political
responses in the viewer. The interesting use of photographs to them is not the way in
which the photograph was constructed, but the connection between the `real past’ of
the photograph and the viewer. The critical question is not the process of recording
5
the image, but the experience of receiving it.
Walter Benjamin follows a similar ethic in his understanding of montageÐ a
mosaic of images, the juxtaposition of images of history with the present to illuminate common experiences between past and present. To Benjamin, the technology of
the camera allows photography to penetrate the surface of everyday observed reality.
The photographic image records moments of everyday experiences, but at the same
time it decontextualizes that moment. The image stands alone, apart from its con6
text. The photograph thus makes the familiar strange; the obvious is questioned.
To Benjamin, the photograph is useful to historians precisely because of this.
Liberated from the original context, photographs allow the viewer an opportunity to
engage with and step inside the image to disrupt a traditional narrative of history.
The disjuncture allows the creation of new meaning. The use of montageÐ the
jumbling together of images from diŒerent sites and historiesÐ can create disorder
and shock in the viewer, and that shock can oŒer viewers’ points of entry into
personal reminiscences, identi® cation and re¯ ections about the past. Loosened
5 See, for example, Roland Barthes, Camera Lucinda (London, 1982) and John Berger, `Ways of
Remembering’, in The Camerawork Essays, edited by Jessica Evans (New York, 1997).
6 Ian Grosvenor, Martin Lawn and Kate Rousmaniere, `Imaging past schooling: the necessity of montage’ , Review of Education/Pedagogy/Cultural Studies (Winter 2000).
112
K. Rousmaniere
from a traditional narrative, or an obsession with fact, the viewers’ responses to the
images are both ahistorical and interwoven with historical questions.
Re-seeing the visual
I have a collection of photographs of schooling from diŒerent countries and diŒerent
time periods: nineteenth- and twentieth-century images from Brazil, Norway,
England, Ireland, Japan, Barbados, Bermuda, Tanzania and America. They are
from my own collection of photographs that I have saved over the years. Some of
the images were given to me, some I picked up at yard sales, one is the school
photograph of my grandfather, a few are photographs that I purchased from a
library’ s archives, some are from contemporary newspapers, some are reproduced
from published books. Most of the photographs have no identi® able name, no date
of production or photographer’s name. A few have no location or date noted: they
are literally timeless and placeless images.
In any traditional sense, any way in which I group these images makes no sense:
not only do the photographs cross cultures, they also cross continents and also time
periods. Each on its own could be the source of a discussion about cultural imperialism, gender relations, poverty, social control, Westernization and a score of other
topics. Together, they seem to hang together only because they are all somehow
photographs `about schools’ in places about which we may not know much speci® c
historical information. We could explore that informationÐ document the history of
education in late nineteenth-century Barbados, for exampleÐ and certainly that
would be a worthwhile venture. But my goal here is to intentionally put those issues
aside and look more freely at the images themselves. Here I will ask questions of
these images, rather than look for answers.
Most of these are photographs about schooling only because I say they are. The
images from the library archive were identi® ed as being about schooling only
because the cataloguer, or perhaps the photographer, said they were. That I recognize all these photographs of groups of people, from times long past and places I
have never been to, may be my ® rst question. My next question has to do with how I
respond to the images and what I can learn from my response.
A favourite image of mine is a photograph of a group of girls with an adult
woman. The archive identi® es this as being photographed in 1895 in Vossessangen,
Norway, a town too small to be on my atlas.7 The archive (and presumably the
photographer himself) identi® ed the scene as `school children with teacher’ but I
know that already, because even though the group is standing outside they have the
familiar pose of a class photograph. The girls stand somewhat stiç y, grouped
together with the taller girls at the back. Nobody is smiling. The older woman stands
at the side, looking stern. I have seen similar class photos from North America, Asia
and Africa. To that extent, the image is familiar, which is to say that I believe I know
it. I recognize that photo as `a school photo’, and I can analyse it in a certain way:
the familiar order and hierarchy of state schooling that forces these energetic country
girls to stand still and look proper; the teacher’s look of control and possible concern
that all the girls continue to stand still and look proper through the long period it
takes a nineteenth-century camera to record a photograph. I know this scene, even
7 Photographs are from the Benjamin Stone Collection, reproduced by courtesy of the Birmingham
Central Library, Local Studies and History Department.
Questioning the visual
113
Figure 1. Vossessengen Norway, 1895
though I did not live in the nineteenth century and have never been to Norway. It
speaks to me of long hours crammed into a classroom desk, of required lessons and
rules, competition, studying, behaving.
But the next photograp h of the same group suddenly changes my entire response.
In this photo, taken either directly before or after the previous one, the whole group
is relaxed and laughing; they stand easily, smiling broadly. Faces that once looked
tense and sombre are now lit up with a new personality and sense of life. The image
startles me because it does not look like a traditional class photograph. Instead, it
looks like a group of active and lively girls. This is no longer a `school photograph’,
this is a photograph of real people, and I am surprised: how rare it is to see such an
informal pose in an education photograph! Why does an image of smiling children
not look like school?
A third photograph surprises me even more. It is the same setting and time, but a
diŒerent group of girls here, with no teacher. This group is in complete motion: the
girls are cheering and throwing their hands in the air, exuberant. The blur of the
photograph, catching this action, adds to the movement of the photo. I feel as if I am
watching an extraordinary scene of enthusiasm, bodily motion and enjoyment. It is a
beautiful photograph of life and wit, and I think to myself again: This really doesn’ t
look like school.
This sequence of photos shows groups of schoolgirls `in motion’. The images
force me to `look behind’ my own assumptions of knowledge about the frozen
images of schools and to peek into the social relations, the life-and-blood experiences
of schools in the past. Here are real people, laughing and enjoying their relationships
114
K. Rousmaniere
Figure 2. Vossessengen Norway, 1895
Figure 3. Vossessengen Norway, 1895
Questioning the visual
115
with one another. The movement shown in these photographs makes me question
the authenticity of the traditional posed classroom photographs. When are these
students most `real’?
I am reminded of my other experiences of schoolingÐ the recess periods and
lunchtimes and play periods when I was lucky enough to spend my days with friends
who were all my age. It was my second family of brothers and sisters, and, for many
of us, it was a preferable family to the one that we returned to in the afternoon. It
was joy and laughter and many times we were lucky enough to have a teacher who
shared those moments with us. At no other period in my life have I spent so much
time with people my own age, engaged in the same work, living and breathing so
closely together. We were all children and we were, for the most part, happy children. Looking at children smile makes me smile, and makes me recall days when I
laughed and ran with my childhood girlfriends. These photos bring me more `inside’
and into connection with the experience of being in a classroom than any posed
photograph would. And I tell a diŒerent story about schooling than my previous
story of boredom, behaviour and rules.
I also admire the ingenuity, humanity and humour of the photographer for being
able to catch the movement and life of the students. This makes me think about the
role of the photographer in posing students to `look like students’. The series allows
me to `see’ that process and to imagine how the `settling down’ process worked. I can
imagine the teacher’s work of adjusting her school day for the visiting photographer,
leading the girls outside the classroom, posing them according to height, straightening hair, wiping smudges oŒtheir face, then listening to the photographer’s directions, reminding the girls to stand still, and waiting. And after the snapshot, relaxing,
and all the girls moving again and rearranging themselves.
Imagining this process reminds me that a large part of the teacher’s job is to
`settle down’ students. For children, the joy of school is being with friends and trying
to play as much as possible. For teachers, the job of teaching is, to a great extent, to
keep children from doing just that. Teachers have been trying to settle down students
for centuries, all over the globe, and we can see in posed photographs the images of
those `settled down’ students. But the image of those laughing Norwegian girls 100
years ago also reminds me how much childhood has to do with movement, with
running and cheering and laughing, and that children have always found ways to
move around while in school.
At the end of this re¯ ection, my questions have less to do with con® rming what
and where this image is and more to do with how children experience schooling, how
they resist structure and try to enjoy their childhood, how they move and play even
in a setting that demands stationary seriousness, and how this phenomenon has
happened in millions of classrooms with millions of children around the world.
My questions have to do with experiences of childhood.
Concluding the inconclusive
The past is never there waiting to be discovered, to be recognized exactly for what it is. History
8
always constitutes the relation between a present and its past.
8 John Berger, Ways of seeing (Penguin, 1980), 11.
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Questioning the visual
History is stories, and it is stories about social groups and political contexts. By
looking at these photographs free from their cultural or social context, disinterested
in the way in which they were produced, ignoring the common skills of analysis and
theories of methodology, I may not be doing `good’ history, but I am trying to create
new questions to then follow up with good history and with better educational
policy. By looking at historical images free from historical context, we might raise
the kinds of questions we need in order to develop a history that can relate to
contemporary context. This, ultimately, is the objective of the history of education:
to help develop education for the future.
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